Big Business Big Responsibilities by Wales, Gorman & Hope

My good friend Andy Wales co-wrote this book. Conflict of interest out of the way - I'm sure you'll be proud Andy. So, the dilemma; how does one critique, effectively in public, a book written by a friend. Questions of whether the friendship are strong enough (or well maintained enough) aside, does one have a duty of honesty when speaking about the efforts of those one likes. At least, is it different than when discussing the work of those you don't know...For me the answer is yes. If you can't be honest with your friends then you need better friends.

So the book...It is, unashamedly, a pamphlet extolling how big business is changing the world for the better. Watching the non-coverage of the wall street protests...looking at the cool dispassionate actions of many corporations (cf the actions of oil companies in the run up to the Arab Spring) it can be hard to come to such a book with an open mind I'll admit. However, the point they are making is a serious one - that business has a role in the way we shape our societies and environments. Demonisation is as simplistic as it is foolish. Companies are made up of people and those people are as human as the next person. I particularly like the chapters on networked society and regulation and complexity. They showcase some clear thinking and irrepressible hope for the good that can be achieved.

However.

Reading it I am frequently put in mind of the abused wife who tells everyone they stay with their partner because they're good people who can change, that their violence is not their fault, that they are abusive because they're misunderstood.

And as I'd say to that person...I don't think so.

The problem I have is that they deploy a post hoc ergo proctor hoc argument about the good that businesses have done, explaining it as if it wasn't driven by public outrage of things revealed which, crucially, had been kept hidden for as long as possible because the perpetrators knew they were committing outrageous actions.

This is problematic because, as far as I think the evidence points, the progressive businesses around the world are limited in number, limited in impact (for instance, the businesses calling for a climate agreement at Copenhagen failed to achieve that end) and it's not about size or quantity, it's about quality. One mining company can destroy a landscape regardless of how well its peers are behaving.

The authors lay out a series of 'myths' about business and while some of them are properly mythical others are, at least from my perspective (as someone who is also in business) a matter of perspective and frankly I disagree as to their interpretation of the way the world works.

I've been trying to work out the problem I have with their argument (the root of why they've mistaken action after the event as caused by the event itself) and I think it boils down to this:

• There is no discussion of the psychology of incentives here, and hence they fail to discuss the reasons why morally neutral people take debatable actions because they're in a place where that action is rational.
• There is no discussion of the failures of big business. It's all very well dismissing myths about business but it's also equally important to truly, and humbly, acknowledge the nature and size of the struggle. The biggest part of the struggle necessitates a consideration of the first point. 
• Curiously I think the authors should have been MORE positive about their own actions and what they have seen change, with their own eyes and by their own hands, since they've been in business. None of the authors is old and all have, at least as far as I can see, helped transform the sector of the business world they've been in. That, to me at least, is one of the reasons why I hope that their vision can progress - because these guys have made it happen for real. The lack of the autobiographical means that those parts of the argument that are about the possibility of change lack conviction.
• Finally, I think, this is also a discussion of what values society should care about. Mixing up the first three points, if we receive our cornflakes of a morning with no sense of its real cost (and see this to make you shudder "How Many Slaves Do I Have?") then there's little chance a few dynamic and visionary insiders can make the changes they hope for. 

Should you read this book? Yes, regardless of its flaws (or otherwise) it's a thoughtful and exciting collection of ideas and hopes for what, together, we can achieve.